The Phantasm
by WOLFEDEN Stories
Summary: I'm sorry...I'm sorry...I'm sorry...I'm sorry...I'm sorry...I'm sorry...I'm sorry...I'm sorry...I'm sorry...I'm sorry...I'm sorry...I'm sorry...I'm sorry...I'm sorry...I'm sorry...I'm sorry...I'm sorry...I'm sorry...I'm sorry...I'm sorry...I'm sorry...I'm sorry...I'm sorry...I'm sorry...I'm sorry...I'm sorry...I'm sorry...I'm sorry...I'm sorry...I'm sorry...it has to be this way...
1. Genesis

The Phantasm

I can hear my heart beat

It writhes in my chest.

It echoes through this black forest.

I can hear His footsteps.

The fog blankets the trees.

The damp, raw, and sickly aura

Follows me with every step I take; why did I come here?

Why did I come to His home?

Slithering bony fingers stroke my shoulder.

His breath licks at my neck.

He's here, of course he would be. I knew better than to come here.

But _why_ did I come here?

I drift my eyes to my back; there He stands.

The moonlight cascades down His dark body.

The black noose of a necktie constricts His slender neck.

I taste the bile bubbling up my throat.

His arms curl around me. I dare not move.

He guides me to him; our chests grind together.

His hands are ebony branches with a touch of finest silk;

I swallow the poison boiling in my mouth.

The branches waltz with us as the dirt road crunches beneath us.

His breath kisses my face; His breast gnashes mine.

His perfect plain plaster face peers down to me.

My eyes, my lips, my face, my body are His.

I yank away and try to run.

His siren song calls me back.

I know I shouldn't stop, I know I should keep running,

But He always knows how to pull me back.

When I was young, He was there beside me,

Watching over me with that plain plaster face.

In my dreams He watched over me,

I could never run away.

Try as I may, try as I might, I could never get away.

That song always pulled me back, and here we are again,

Although this time, I know it will be the last.

I don't care anymore; I'm sick of avoiding Him.

I'm tired of running and hiding.

I'm tired of dreaming and waiting.

I'm tired of kicking and screaming.

I'm tired of it all.

I welcome Him. I want Him to take me.

I want Him to destroy me.

I want Him to break me.

I just want Him to end it all.

The Phantasm lifts me into his arms.

He pins me to a tree; the branches curl around my wrists.

His ebony hand rests over my heart; the tip pierces my skin.

I'm finally His now.

He now has what He always wanted.


	2. 1: Friends

I

Friends

In the summer of 1993 I had a different life planned. I wanted to be an environmentalist, you know, so I could help protect the forests and the natural wildlife on Earth. I thought that was what I was supposed to do. I was twelve at time, stuck in the boonies of a rural Du Qoin, Illinois. I didn't belong there. No one did. We were all just slapped together in a pile of mud, dirt, and wheat. There wasn't anything there; there was no future, no past, there was just the present. I had to get out of there or I was gonna lose more than my just mind.

We were away from the city. We were in the outskirts actually, my family and I, in a quaint town away from the concrete forest. We went to church every Sunday, prayed before every meal, and went about our business at work and at school. Dad ran an old saw mill, something he inherited from his own dad. Mom worked as a teacher at my school. She made sure that I never had any classes with her, so it wouldn't look like I was getting any special treatment. The last thing I needed was a couple of snot nosed kids calling me a "momma's boy." Even so, the same snot nosed kids always found something else to make fun of me for.

So Dad chopped, sawed, and sold lumber to contractors and to Home Depot, while Mom had all the kids do book learning. She was especially busy that July. Some of the kids in my class, and a surprising amount in other classes, flunked math, science, and English, so they had no choice but to make it up or suffer the seventh grade all over again. Math was my weakest point, but somehow I pulled B-. If I had gotten any lower, my mom would have beaten my ass. If I so much as mentioned a C on a test, she'd give me a death glare with her ape-like grimace before yelling at me.

So it was summer vacation for me and I enjoyed just about every minute of it. I had a good friend taking care of me while Mom and Dad were out working. My friend and babysitter, Dani, came over every day and we'd play and talk until supper time. Dani was a good girl. We'd talk about TV, my school, her high school, her parents, and we'd play all the time. She was my babysitter, yeah, but she was more than that. She was the best a friend a kid like me could ask for. One of the best parts about her, however, was that she was an older woman. A seventeen year-old girl hanging out with me, a dopey twelve year-old. That was rich. All the guys in my class were jealous of me whenever I brought her up. I wouldn't let them go a day without me bragging about how Dani bought me ice cream and candy.

Dani babysat me for two years. She'd watch me every day in the summer and some days during the school year when my folks weren't around. We were inseparable. There barely wasn't anything we didn't do when we were around.

I remember on that Friday in July, we were running through the wheat fields near Old Manson's farm. We played a little of hide-and-seek with some tag. I'd hide in the tall thicket while she hunted me down. I breathed hard whenever she got too close. Once I saw her looking towards the direction of my hiding spot, I booked it out of there. Sometimes she spotted my footprints and caught me. When it was my turn to find her, I had to struggle. She blended in with the environment; she was in her element. I never caught a footprint or heard her sneaking about. I lost every time when it was my turn to be "it", but I still had fun. For me, losing was just another way of winning when it came to her.

Our competitive nature got the best of us when we moved on to tag. I yelped and hollered as I evaded her swiping claws while she dodged my tackles. After a few hours of rustling through the wheat field, I fell down into a small clearing and looked up at the bloody sunset above me. Dani sat beside me. She hugged her legs to her chest and just smiled down at me as I tried to catch my breath. It took me five whole minutes before I could spit out any words.

"What're you looking at?" I asked after my breather.

"Just looking at you," she said with that same smile that I loved.

"How come?"

"I dunno. Just 'cause, I guess. I wanna make sure you're feeling okay."

"I'm getting better with my asthma. I might not need my inhaler anymore." I smirked. "You saw how I ran! I haven't been able to do that in a long time! I think I'm finally over it."

"Still. Let me know if you're in pain or if you can't catch your breath. I got it in my pocket just in case."

"I said I'm fine."

"And I said lemme know just in case. Your mom was pretty strict about that asthma of yours."

I frowned at that. "Mom worries too much. I'm just fine."

Dani huffed. "You can be a real pain sometimes."

I scanned the clouds that floated over my head. I pouted a little more. "You know, I could have gotten away from you if I didn't trip."

"You gotta tie your shoes tighter, I keep telling you that. You leave them so loose that they're gonna slide off your feet."

"I do tie them tight. They just keep coming undone and I gotta keep retying them. I dunno what's wrong. Maybe I need new shoes, like those velcro ones in the store that I like."

"Velcros are for kids who are lazy," Dani sneered at me.

"I am _not!_ I just think they're neat, that's all."

"Here, let me show you how to tie a real tie."

Dani squatted down at my feet and pulled my laces apart. She flung them over each other and looped them over, her fingers dancing in elegance.

"Here's what you do," she said, sticking her tongue out at me, "you take them like this. Then you go over and under like that. You make a few more loopty loops here and yank them hard."

She released the laces of my sneakers after giving them a tight tug. The knot was so tiny. I couldn't fit my nail in between them to untie them. I even tried pulling my shoe off, but the knot was too tight.

"How the heck do you get these things off?" I whined. "I can't get them apart."

"You just pull the laces with the plastic part away from each other. The knot will come loose if you do it hard enough."

"Will it?" I tried, but my fingers weren't strong enough to untie the knot. I panicked. Sweat started to shoot from my pores."What'd you do to my shoes?! I'm gonna have to ask Dad to cut my feet off if I'm stuck like this."

Dani laughed. "I don't think it'll come to that. Here, I'll show you." She took the laces and pulled them away from each other. Surely enough, the knot came undone. "See? Like that."

I could only blink at her. "How'd you do that?"

"Magic," Dani said, waving her hands in front of her. "I'm a witch."

"You're too nice to be a witch."

She had another laugh. She rubbed my head roughly; I only smacked her hand away. Dani laid down beside me and looked up into the sky. She watched the same clouds that I did. I wondered if she saw the same shapes as me. That's what always fascinated me about clouds and shapes: they were never the same for two observers. I wondered what she saw in those clouds. I wanted to ask her, but I noticed that her smile started to fade.

A slight frown stretched across her pink lips. Her eyes still followed the red-orange sky, but something about her seemed different from the girl I just finished playing with.

"You okay, Dani?" I asked.

"Hmm? Yeah. I'm okay."

"You sure? People with sad faces aren't usually okay."

"You caught me, huh?" Dani played with her nails. She didn't even look at me. "I was just thinking about your birthday next week."

"You don't know what to get me for my birthday? It's okay, you don't have to be sad about that. My mom has a toy catalogue."

"No, it's not that. I'm just a little sad because you're getting older."

"What's wrong with that?"

"You're going to be thirteen." Dani followed another group of clouds. Her nails clicked against each other a little more. "Pretty soon you're gonna start having responsibilities."

"Responsibilities?" I heard of the word before all the time from my mom, but I never truly understood what it meant. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, you're going to be doing more than just helping your mom out with the dishes and helping your dad with the garbage. Your chores are going to get a lot tougher. You'll be taking care of the house all my yourself when your folks go out, you'll be doing more grown-up work in school, and then you'll be in high school before you know it."

"High school? Oh, you mean like ninth grade?"

"Yeah, like ninth grade. I'll be in twelfth grade, and then I'll be going into college."

"What's college?"

"That's like a special school for grown-ups."

"Grown-ups go to school?" I scratched my head. "Why would they do that? I thought when you're a grown-up, that meant you could stay up all night and eat as much ice cream as you want with all the TV you could watch. Why the heck would anybody want to keep going to school? Are your mom and dad making you do that?"

"Jake," she said, finally looking at me. She sat up, Her frown grew wider than before. "You won't need a babysitter anymore."

"I won't? How come?"

"Because you'll be older. You'll be doing more things on your own. You won't need someone to watch you. You won't need me."

I didn't understand what she was saying.

"Wait...so...you don't wanna play with me anymore, Dani? You don't like me?"

"I didn't say that," Dani shook her head. "Of course I still wanna play with you. Of course I like you and I want to keep spending time with you, but it'll be different. I won't be over every day in the summer to see you, or during the school year."

"Then how are we going to play together?"

"We can still play every now and then, but you'll have more stuff to do at home and in school, and I'll be graduating high school soon. We're both going to be busy. We might not see each other as much anymore."

"I wouldn't be busy for you." I sat upright and looked her dead in the face. "I'd always make time for you. You're my friend, Dani. We're friends, right? Best friends. Best friends don't stop doing things just because the other is busy. They always make time, don't they? You make time for your friends. Why don't you make time for me and I'll make time for you when I get those responsibilities? Would that be okay?"

Dani's frown vanished from her face. Her face was stone cold and a few tears streamed down her face. Without a word, she crawled over and hugged me tight. I didn't know what to say to that, so I just returned the hug. I felt warm all over, even though she was crushing my spine with that grip of hers. I didn't mind the pain. If we could stay like that for forever, I thought, I wouldn't mind it.

"You're such a little dork," she said. "But you're my little dork."

"So...what does that mean?"

"It means we can still play, though it won't be as often as we'd like. I wasn't planning on leaving you high and dry, but I am going to miss playing all the time with you. I can't tell you how much I fun I have when we play games like this."

"Well, if we won't be able to play all the time when we get these responsibilities," I pulled away from her to see her face, "then why don't we spend more time together this summer? We can spend lots of time doing whatever we want to make up for the times we won't get to play."

"You're so mature for your age that it scares me sometimes," she giggled. "I feel like I'm talking to someone my age half the time."

"Well, Mom and Dad have been saying I'm 'mature' lately. I dunno what that exactly means though."

"It's a good thing, Jake, don't worry about it. It means you're different from all the other kids."

"And being this different...is good?"

Dani hugged me harder. "It is. It means you're special. But yeah...let's do tons of stuff together while we have the time this summer."

I nodded with a bright smile.

Dani sighed, even though she smiled through her tears.

"You know, Dani. I wish I never grow up. I just want to keep playing and laughing with you. I wish this summer never ends."

Dani stroked my head; she scratched my scalp. She knew how I loved that.

"I do too, Jake," she whispered in a hushed tone. "I do too."


End file.
